Long Hard Road out of Hell

Title: Long Hard Road Out of Hell
Author: claudia6913
Rating: NC-17
Pairing: W/A
Summary: Willow wakes to her worst nightmare, and it just keeps getting worse. This is a response to Gabrielle’s ‘Willow/Angel Challenge’ on NHA Forums.
Distribution: Vampyre Haven, NHA, SoG, TSFA, and anywhere else I post. All others just ask and you shall receive.
Disclaimer: I unfortunately do not own the characters. Those are owned by Joss and Co. I seek no profit from the use of anything here.
Warning: This fic is now extremely graphic in nature. Please be warned.
Feedback: Of course! ghoztstarz@yahoo.com
Author’s Notes: The title was taken from the song ‘Long Hard Road out of Hell’ by Marilyn Manson from the ‘Spawn’ soundtrack.

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Chapter 7

The first thing she notices is pain, a deep pain that sits heavy and throbbing throughout her. Willow’s head is pounding and her body stiff from lack of movement. She tries moving her hand to rub at her face and hears the chain rattle. Immediately, her eyes open. Darkness, nothing but pitch black now that the candle has gone out. Her body involuntarily shudders, knowing before she does that she would not like what she would see if there was light. There is a body off to her lefth anh an arm draped around her midsection. ‘Angel,’ she thinks. The tears start, slowly at first, before they give way to sobs that wrack her body.

Realization has hit her, hard and fast. He has raped her and drunk from her. ‘Why?’ her mind keeps repeating. ‘No,’ her mind cries. ‘No, it can’t be. It just can’t! It’s not Angel, not Angel. But Buffy said…she said the l wol worked. Oh God.’

Angel is awake now, listening quietly to her sobbing. A feeling of guilt tries to worm its way into him. ‘She’s just a demon,’ he tells himself. ‘She deserves this.’ The guilt is quenched…for now. There is so much he can do to her that he almost feels almost giddy at the possibilities. The room has gone dark, but he can see. He can see her wild eyes searching the darkness, hear the hitch of her breath as she cries, and see the hard thumping of her pulse in her neck. It calls him, her blood does, the coursing of it through her veins. He licks his lips and can still taste her in the corners of his mouth. She is starting to do breathing exercises, trying to rein herself in, and Angel momentarily respects her for her strength. ‘Just a demon,’ the voice says. He is thankful to that inner voice, thankful that it keeps him on track and helps him stay focused on who, or rather what, she really is. She may have the face of a friend, but she is really a demon, one of the hundreds that have tortured him over and over again.

Growing impatient, Angel sits up and gets off the bed. He sees Willow still at his movement. Walking to the end table, he grabs another candle and lights it, illuminating the room once again.

The horror of this room hits Willow again. She is still disbelieving, not sure if she is dreaming. Thin iin in her body abruptly lets her know that she is indeed awake and not sleeping. Her eyes dart around the room from Angel, to the table, the cross, the chains, before finally settling back on Angel. Willow tracks his movements carefully. ‘I have to find a way out,’ she thinks. It seems an impossible feat to her. She didn’t see how they came in or where exactly she was. There was too much darkness, but she knows she’s in a basement, the coolness of the air tells her that much.

“How are you this morning?” Angel asks, reaching out to put a lock of her hair behind her ear.

His simple movement sends her heart racing as she jerks away from the offending hand. She can’t handle him touc her her, not like that, not after what he’d done. Willow goes into a fit, pulling on the chains so hard that they bite into her wrists, making them bleed. She thrashes wildly as Angel looks on with amusement.

Finding her escape impossible, Willow calms down. She is breathing quick and fast. Shock is making her pulse race and her whole body goes clammy with a cold sweat.

“Deep breaths, otherwise you’ll pass out,” Angel says calmly. She looks at him confused, unsure of why he would give her advice like that if he has her chained up. Taking long deep breaths, she calms a bit.

“There,” he says with a smile.

“What do you want?” Willow asks in a small voice. She is in desperate need of water, but doesn’t want to ask. She has a frantic curiosity about why he is doing this, and frankly she just has to know.

“I want a lot of things,” Angel says by way of an answer. He moves slowly and purposefully over towards the table in the middle of the room. Dragging his hand lightly over the edges, he finds it is dusty. The restraints are still in good working order, though. They are thick and wide leather wrist straps that buckle under the table.gelugelus had specifically asked for this to be built years ago, so no one could escape. Angel goes to methodically unbuckle each strap.

Willow looks on with horror. She knows what the table is for even though she’s never seen one like it before. She knows it’s for her. But she doesn’t know she is screaming at the top of her lungs. Not until Angel tells her gruffly to shut up.

“You will have plenty to scream about soon, demon. Might as well save your voice for when it’s more appropriate,” Angel says.

Knowing she can do nothing about her situation doesn’t calm Willow; it just makes her struggles increase. She franticly pulls on the chains, legs kicking, trying anything to get out, get away from this horror, this waking nightmare. Willow silently prays to anyone who will listen to her. She doesn’t think this is possible, it just can’t be. Her struggles gradually cease from exhaustion; she just doesn’t have the strength to put up this much of a fight. Her eyes slowly close as unconsciousness tries to claw its way up and out to wash over her, to shield her from the terrors she has awoken to. The last thing she sees is Angel standing over her.

“They just don’t make them like they used to,” Angel says to the now unconscious Willow.

Moving closer, he grabs her wrists and inspects the damage. Blood still slowly seeps from the small gashes she put in them from her struggles. He can’t help himself; Angel just has to lick the wounds after releasing her arms from the shackles. Her blood tingles on his tongue as he savors its flavor and power, rolling it around in his mouth. Angel could easily loose himself in her body, in her blood, in her skin, in her. ‘Not Willow, it’s not her,’ he says to himself. ‘Of all the forms these demons can take, they have to take this one! Why? Has my torment not been enough? Have I not paid enough?’

Shaking himself out of his thoughts, Angel walks resolutely over to the table he has set up in the middle of the room. None too gentle dre drops her on the table causing a small moan of pain to come from her, but nothing more. Angel efficiently works at the straps, making sure they are tight enough to keep her in place.

Finally, Willow is securely in place on her stomach. The hard wood presses her breasts up, almost to the point of being painful. Her arms are outstretched to each side and her legs are more than a little uncomfortable due to how far apart they are. She still lies there semi-conscious. She can hear Angel moving around, but her eyes don’t want to open. They know better then to open, they are telling her to just lay there and not look, and she is inclined to agree.

Angel stands there for a minute, just looking. For hundreds of years he has been the tortured, not the torturer, he just needs to get back into the mindset. Taking a deep breath, he pulls away what is left of Willow’s clothing, baring her back to him. He takes a moment to appreciate her subtle beauty. His eyes trail along a line from the smooth, milk-white neck that now bears his mark, along her spine, which leads tantalizingly to the soft swell of her buttocks and on to those long slender legs that she never shows. Reaching out, Angel puts his hand just above her skin, only centimeters away from contact, and traces the curves of her body, memorizing them. ‘So close to perfection,’ he thinks. ‘They copied her so well, just as I remember.’

“Enough!” Angel yells, bringing his hand down hard on her buttocks with a loud smack. It is enough to cause Willow to gasp in pain and her eyes to open in surprise.

Briskly, Angel walks over to the wall of whips, glancing every now and then between the large red hand print on her and the wall. Willow’s eyes go wide with horror. ‘See, this is why I kept my eyes closed,’ Willow thinks.

“What do you think Willow?” Angel asks, startling her out of her thoughts and gesturing at the collection of whips. “Do you have a preference?”

Willow just lies there, not saying a thing. She’t g’t get her mouth to work, or air to move across her vocal cords to form the words she wants to say. Her brain can not wrap around what it is she is looking at. Leather, it was just so much leather hanging there, waiting for her to choose, to pick one to be laid across her skin over and over again…marking her. Finally, her head begins to move in a slow shake.

“No?” Angel asks, a small smile gracing his lips. He knew she wouldn’t choose. The asking is part of the torture. Some memories of long ago when he was Angelus, and not tsad sad pathetic vampire sent to hell with a soul, are coming back to him, showing him how it was. Slowly, Angel traces a hand along each whip, fingering the braided leather on some, the thin straps on others. ‘Must make it last,’ he thinks. ‘Last so she can pay, so they all can pay.’

“Yes, yes make it last,” Angel says out loud. The small edge of madness shows in his eyes and tells Willow that she should truly be afraid. Not the small fear of ‘when will I get out,’ but the larger fear of ‘how soon will I die.’

Swiftly, Angel grabs a whip. It is nothing more then a thick strap a few inches wide, but it will do for starters. He moves far enough down her body that Willow has to strain her neck to see him, and then only through a veil of her own hair.

The crack of the whip is heard before Willow even feels the pain. It washes over her, slowly at first, then faster until a scream is ripped from her throat. The burning pain sears her skin a bright red. Angel lays it directly across her buttocks, closer to her back.

“Well, that was a lovely scream. It even rivaled some of my better ones,” Angel says, walking around to crouch down and look at her in the eyes. “Care for another?”

Willow takes no time in answering this time. Her head shakes, causing her vision to blur slightly. “No,” she whispers. “Please no. Why?” Tears come to leave streaks along her dirt-stained cheeks.

“You ask ‘why’?” Angel says, standing up to continue. “How dare you ask ‘why’!” The end of his sentence is punctuated with the snap of the whip on Willow’s lower back.

“You know why.”

“No,” Willow says through her tears. Her voice is small and weak. Never has she felt such pain as she is now. It’s overwhelming.

“Well, then I shall educate you,” Angel says. He lays the whip down again, near the middle of her back. The redness is spreading, much to his delight. “You mark very well, Willow, very well indeed. Now, where was I?” The whip smacks again. “Oh, yes. Well, I would think you should know why. Turn about is fair play. That’s the saying isn’t it?”

“I never,” Willow starts to say, but is cut off by another hit with the whip. cle clenches her teeth on the pain, refusing to cry out again. “I never did this to you.”

“Oh but you did. You and all of your…friends, if that’s what you call them. You paraded yourselves about me, cutting me up, making me suffer. For what? For what?!” Angel yells, laying a rain of smacks along her legs. The quickness of it makes her involuntarily twitch and squirm. The unwanted cry of pain is forced from her mouth.

Finally, Angel stops whipping her. Ww brw breathes heavily which brings the pain to the surface. Each little movement hurts. She has no clue what is going on in his mind, and is no longer sure she wants to know. It’s almost as if he is crazed or delusional. Either way he is dangerous to her, and she can do nothing about it. Willow doesn’t even notice or care about the tears this time. There is no stopping them.

“I didn’t do anything,” Willow says in a small choked whisper. “I’m sorry Angel. I’m so sorry. I didn’t know. She said it worked. I didn’t know. She had to kill you. The portal was opened; there was no other way to close it. I’m so sorry.”

“Sorry? You’re sorry?” Angel asks angrily. He stalks over to the wall and grabs another whip; this one has ten half-inch straps of leather connected to a handle. Walking back over to Willow he grabs her roughly by the hair and yanks her head up at a painful angle to look at him. “How dare you say you’re sorry. You have no idea what it was like. No, you do know, only not from where I was crouched for years. Now, now you will know.” Shoving her head back down he cracks the tethered whip across her back. Thin lines of blood come slowly to the surface. The red of her skin almost matches the red of the blood. Large welts are forming in the most abused areas.

“You know now, don’t you? For years you kept me trapped in that…that place, my hell. Every time I tried to escape you laughed and beat me more. For years I watched you parade those I loved in front of me, just images of them I know now, but then…then I thought they were real. You handed them knives and whips. Kind of like the one I’m using on you. You gave them the tools to carve into me, to beat me bloody until I couldn’t think. Yet, you wouldn’t let me die. And now, now you have the audacity to say you’re sorry? No, no you don’t get that luxury. You aren’t allowed that type of absolution. Not now, not ever. Hear me?” Angel cracks the whip again and again with a fury. The blood wells and starts to pool in the small of her back. Her screams resound throughout the room, echoing from the walls and from the ceiling.

Stopping, Angel breaths deeply, even though he doesn’t need the air, the exertion just makes him think he does. Willow is making small piteous sounds, he throat long sore and scratched, no longer able to speak or scream.

Angel feels something…some stirring of something at the back of his neck, worming its way down his spine. ‘It can’t be,’ he thinks. The familiar tingling is something no vampire would ever mistake for anything other then what it is…the Slayer.

“We will have to continue this later,” Angel says off-handedly to Willow. He races to the concealed door and opens it, making sure it closes behind him, then takes off up the stairs to meet someone else who is deserving of punishment, someone else he can make pay.